Sewing for (and by) Dummies

After sitting on yoga mats in the living room for two weeks, our beautiful comfy couch finally arrived and immediately became the object of my accessorizing. The color choice of this couch was strategic; match Wallace as closely as possible to minimize the appearance of cat hair and thus the necessity to clean it. Since we now have this large neutral backdrop I decided to use pillows to bring some color into the room. A perfect opportunity to utilize my aforementioned newly acquired sewing machine. The hitch here is that I've never used a sewing machine before. So it sat gathering dust for months until I found the time to properly introduce myself to the machine, luckily now I have plenty and we can become well acquainted. If you're cool with your teacher knowing as little as you do, this is an opportunity for anyone interested to learn along with me. The plan here is for me to screw up so you don't have to! My first endeavor was very high school Home Ec (RIP), a decorative throw pillow!

Materials

• 1/2 yard of fabric
• Sewing Thread
• Invisible Thread
• Embroidery Thread
• Scissors
• 2 Buttons
• Glue
• Sewing Needle
• Embroidery Needle
• Polyfill
• Pencil

Start by folding your fabric in half with the right side (that means the pretty printed side) on the inside. Trace a round object 1 inch larger than your final piece (You can also create a compass of sorts by tying a pencil to one end of a piece of string, holding the other to the center of your fabric, and drawing a circle), and cut out both pieces at once. From there you can move over to your sewing machine, make sure your fabric pieces remain ​right sides together. Before you get started, it's important to do what I learned is called a back stitch... it took me several tries to figure this out, but apparently it's important so... do it I guess. Then I just used the basic straight stitch (number 01 on my machine) to attach the two pieces. Because you're sewing in a circle, work slowly so you can easily adjust the fabric as you go. Do this until you have about 2 inches remaining open, then back stitch again because it keeps your stitches from unraveling... or something.

From here you can flip your fabric right sides out and stuff it with polyfill (I just used the guts of an old pillow). A dowel (or any kind of stick really) can be helpful to evenly distribute the filling throughout the pillow. Use your invisible thread and this invisible stitch to hand sew up the rest of your pillow.

To cinch the center and add some buttons, I used invisible thread to secure the center of my pillow first, but you can just go straight in with the button thread if you're confident like that. Side note regarding the buttons: the buttons I had lying around were these gaudy plastic things so I used some fabric scraps and good ol' Weldbond to make them more suitable. To add buttons, double up your embroidery thread on a long embroidery needle, knot the ends together, and find the center of your pillow. Then pierce through the front side, thread through one button on the backside, come through to the front again, and thread through the second button. Create a square knot with the original tail and the remaining needle thread. Be sure to pull tightly so the buttons cinch the center of the pillow. Tie a couple more square knots and trim the thread so it is no longer than the radius of the button itself and you're done! So easy a high school freshman can do it! Despite its simplicity, I can't help but be extremely proud of this minor accomplishment.